“The smart grid community saw a major meeting of the minds today: the ZigBee Alliance and Wi-Fi Alliance have teamed up to develop applications for home energy management and networking.”

“Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.”

“The chip giant has developed a broad strategy to make money on smart-grid technologies, touching on everything from high-performance computing to simulate the electricity grid to home energy management systems. Also in the works is a project with smart-grid start-up Tendril Networks to let consumers program a home’s energy settings from an IP television.”

“Following approval for the new gTLD system, which is expected to take place after the latter half of 2011, Canon will make full use of the new domain name to increase the convenience and effectiveness of its online communications.”

“Several cable operators and movie studios are teaming together to launch a $30 million marketing and promotion campaign touting the virtues of movies on demand.”

“The FCC wants the cable industry to adopt an open-standard, “gateway” device to replace current set-tops by the end of 2012, and in the meantime make a bunch of fixes to its CableCARD regime by next fall, according to a copy of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan”

“AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Qualcomm, Technicolor and Verizon have joined DLNA’s 21 existing Promoter Members.”

“The cards “will be sold where consumers buy memory cards today, including retail merchants and major network operators as well as new locations such as mass transit kiosks and financial institution branch locations,” says First Data, and “SideTap MicroSD cards may also come pre-bundled in handsets.”"

“While it’s a theoretical solution right now, the scientists who created it are confident that we’ll someday see a practical application. And when we do, because of the project’s nanoscale nature, we may be able to store 25 DVDs’ worth of information on a postage stamp-sized storage device.”

“Silverlight 4, Microsoft’s software for Web multimedia, is now on 60 percent of all Internet-connected devices, the company said. A year ago, the software was at 45 percent penetration.”

“The brains of the SuRF wireless sensor platform is a Texas Instruments TI-CC 430 system on a chip that combines the microprocessor and the radio. A network of sensors placed around a house, connected to appliances like your dishwasher or thermostat, could monitor energy use. It could also automatically turn down the heat or air conditioning in an unoccupied room, or shut off power to an outlet where a TV or computer is plugged in but not on.”

“That prototype replaces the power button with a presence sensor, turning on the display only when there are people around to enjoy it. Meanwhile there’s also a more complex image processing unitthan you’d usually find in such a frame; that’s because the Casio DPF can convert regular photos into painting-style artwork on-the-fly. Meanwhile there’s also WiFi connectivity and – despite the passivity premise – support for Flash Lite 3.0 widgets. There’s also talk of more advanced user-recognition systems, rather than solely presence, which could be used to automatically pull out images to display based on who is looking at the screen.”

“The finding may lead to a new generation of medical devices that can monitor blood sugar or electrical activity in the heart. Such devices cut energy needs for a monitoring network by about 90 percent compared to wireless devices running on batteries.”

“Wireless and self-pairing USB connection make setup and use effortless. MSRP will range from $49 to $99 depending on volume and bundling options. It will ship before the Christmas 2010 holiday season.”

“Richard DeVaul’s Linkedin status changed last month from Founder & President at AWare Technologies to Senior Prototype Engineer at Apple, Inc. This is a significant hire for Apple and one that shows the company is looking far ahead into the future of mobile computing.”

“SpotRank gives developers access to hundreds of million of anonymous location entry points put into the Skyhook system. In fact, there are some 500 million points (100 meter “spots”) at the service’s launch. With this massive amount of data, developers can do things such as predict what locations will be hot on which nights, or predict traffic patterns. They have so much data because it’s not based around things like check-ins, which are hot right now on the consumer side of location, but rather everytime a device needs location for anything.”

“Lithium-ion batteries are already close to the 20-hour life promised back in 2007 for laptops, but Lithium-sulphur batteries being worked on at Stanford University may improve battery life by 300 per cent.”

“IMS research study estimates global Consumer Electronics (CE) market to reach $406 billion in 2010, a growth of 8.2% compared to 2009 global revenue of $375 billion (excluding home office equipment and low-end mobile phones). 2009 CE revenues have declined by 5% compared to 2008.”

“Subscribers to IPTV delivered via the Internet and broadband networks will jump to 8.5 million in 2010, rising by a hefty 96 percent from 4.4 million in 2009, according to iSuppli Corp. And while growth rates during the next three years will not equal the 2010 peak, IPTV development will continue to acquire impressive momentum, reaching expansion rates as high as 51 percent, iSuppli estimates. By 2014, IPTV subscribers in China will exceed 31 million.”

“The six goals set out for “the next decade” propose that every American have the affordable access to “robust broadband services,” and, more specifically, at least 100 million US homes with affordable access to at least 100MBps down / 50Mbps up speeds. All communities should have at their disposal 1Gbps service, every first responder should have “access to a nationwide, wireless interoperable broadband public safety network,” and here’s an interesting one: every citizen should be able to use broadband to “track and manage real-time [home] energy consumption.”"

“Global LBS platforms revenue will grow from $560 million in 2010 to $1.8 billion in 2015, at which point they will reach saturation.”

“It’s the first city to use Microsoft’s four-color HCCB Tags instead of the more common black and white QR codes. With the TagReader app, users can scan Tags around the National Museum of Cinema, Palazzo Madama, Museum of Oriental Art (MAO), Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAM), and the Borgo and Rocca Medioevale Museum. All of these launch mobile browser pages with text information, video, or MP3 content.”

“Lenovo Group expects wireless Internet products to account for up to 80 percent of its sales within five years as it pursues expansion in faster-growing emerging markets, CEO Yang Yuanqing said Friday.”

“Apple have quietly added a few new details to their iBooks and 3G pages, including confirmation that readers will be able to load non-DRM ePUB format titles to their iPad via iTunes.”

“19 service providers account for about 93 percent (about 71.8 million subscribers) of the total U.S. market. Annual net broadband additions in 2009 were 75 percent of the 2008 total, when these same carriers added about 5.4 million subscribers.”

“By combining 3D-stack-architecture of multiple cores with hair-thin, liquid-cooled microchannels, IBM and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich hope to extend Moore’s law for another decade or more.”

“Speakers made with carbon nanotube sheets are extremely thin, light and almost transparent. They have no moving parts and can be attached to any surface, which makes the surface acoustically active. They can be concealed in television and computer screens, apartment walls, or in the windows of buildings and cars.”

“You can place a compatible camera on the left palm rest and instantly transfer all your content to your laptop and visa versa, wirelessly.”

“By early 2013, half of the respondents expect to offer time-of-use pricing to all of their residential customers.”

“The new devices needed to be small, cheap, and most of all “cool.” That meant they should be precisely tailored to the needs of particular consumers for particular uses. Microsoft’s software was like a Swiss Army knife, adequate for many things but optimized for none. It was the only software that could work in handhelds, phones, and set-tops, but it wasn’t the best software for any of those categories.”

“Tt the back end of 2010, the company will have a commercial launch with Orange for mobile payments and the consumers will be able to buy an NFC-enabled phone and make payments with it.”

“AMD hasn’t yet hammered out all the specifics, but the netbook part will run in the 10-15 watt range, which is similar to the Intel Atom, and “it will have a good processor integrated with graphics, so you won’t need the [Nvidia] Ion graphics to give it half-decent performance,” according to Nigel Dessau, chief marketing officer at AMD.”

“The carrier could have a phone that runs on Long Term Evolution, a type of high-speed wireless technology, three to six months after it launches the service, Anthony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon Wireless, said in an interview. The company expects to launch the service in some markets by the end of the year.”

“All the NFC functionality in the SideTap cards fits into just one small corner of the microSD card, enabling the device to include standard memory expansion functionality as well as NFC. In fact, the antenna itself takes up less than 1% of the surface area of the microSD card”

“The flash drive protects data with 256-bit AES hardware encryption and offers remote management of the drive. The Elite limits the number of password attempts, has master password support, and can be IP or domain restricted. The drive has a tamper resistant design and integrated anti-virus and malware protection.”

“That’s not just running at the 480×340 resolution that most phones have now, that’s PS3-esque graphics on 720p output via HDMI to a TV. Hell, some phones in three years will have a 720p display native.”

“The models feature internet connectivity for access to various on-demand services such as Youtube. Video can also be streamed to the device from your PC or other DLNA equipped device.”

“Volpi will bring real expertise to the Sonos board. As recently as 2007 he ran an $11 billion routing and access products busines for Cisco. He clearly knows how to sell products at scale.”

“Sony just officially announced the PlayStation Move motion controller at GDC 2010, calling it the “next generation of motion gaming” because it’s so precise — latency is about the same as the DualShock 3.”

“According to the company, most people achieve five to ten characters per minute the first time they use the thing, with some folks eventually typing as fast as 1 character per second. In addition to to text messages, the system can also be used to trigger an alarm, send email, or send commands to external devices.”

“Gamers will be able to subscribe to the PC or Mac games-on-demand service for $14.95 a month, and get access to a wide variety of current titles from major publishers. It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.”

“There’s no easy way to create an app that can run on the wide range of sets.”

“The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers,” said Roy Chen, ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, during a press meeting in Taipei. “You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter.”

“An optical fiber backbone (red) provides broadband connections between the central offices and antenna base stations. Then, the base stations wirelessly transmit 5-mm-wave (60 GHz) signals to customers.”

“The number of worldwide mobile users increased 15 percent last year, while broadband saw a 14 percent boost. However, the 20 largest service providers registered less than 2 percent growth in aggregated annual revenues, TeleGeography said, most of which was the result of M&A activity.”

“Just plug a transceiver into a free USB socket, attach two USB peripherals and a DVI monitor to the base station, and enjoy the luxury of using a real-deal keyboard, mouse and LCD when your laptop is at home.”

“In 2009, Netbooks accounted for 11.7% of the portable computer market.”

“Emerging-market respondents are more than two and a half times more likely to buy a smart phone during the next year than their mature-market counterparts (52 percent vs. 20 percent). They are more than twice as likely to have bought a smart phone in the past year (67 percent vs. 32 percent) and are twice as likely to have bought a computer in the past year (40 percent vs. 20 percent).”

“The new NFC Forum members are from several sectors of the NFC ecosystem, the numerous industries that are stakeholders and contributors to NFC technology. Industries represented include semiconductor and terminal manufacturers, higher education, service providers, compliance and testing organizations and systems integrators.”

“That amount of money is impressive, but it also suggests the enormity of the task ahead. Foundation Capital led the round. Other existing investors have also joined in, including U.S. Venture Partners, Samsung Ventures, Panasonic and New Enterprise Associates. New investors include Lux Capital, Hatteras Funds, Best Buy and Cisco. But SiBEAM still competes with other rivals such as Amimon, which leads the WHDI alliance and claims it can transfer data using Wi-Fi at rates of 3 gigabits a second. “